“What?” her partner said, moving to look over her shoulder.
“This,” she answered, pointing to something Kirk could not see.
“That’s no animal track.”
“No, it sure isn’t.” The soldier stood again and peered out into the woods beyond the clearing. Kirk saw that she was looking in the direction of the red-shirted security officer who had drawn his attention earlier, and he had to resist the urge to pivot his head and look that way also. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on the soldier, who tilted her head as she studied whatever it was that had caught her eye. Hopefully, with any luck, she would decide she was looking at a brightly colored flowering plant or something equally innocuous.
That hope was proved futile when she raised her rifle in a smooth fluid motion and sighted down its barrel. Kirk had no choice now. He raised himself on the balls of his feet, just enough to swing his arm over the top of the log, and fired a shot at the alien. Her weapon discharged into the dirt as she pitched forward and crashed to the ground, stunned.
The second soldier reacted immediately, bringing her weapon to bear at the same instant Kirk revealed himself. Her free hand went to the side of her helmet, touching a button there, which emitted a clear electronic chime. “Code 1-2! Co—” she barked, before she was felled by a shot from the far left side of the clearing. A second later, D’Abruzzo came leaping across the clearing, making a beeline for Kirk. “Captain, we have to—”
“—get out of here, yes,” Kirk finished in unison with him. Whoever was listening on the other side of the soldier’s comm link surely wouldn’t waste any time once they realized both their advance scouts had gone silent. The rest of the landing party members had broken cover and were moving in together again. “This way,” he said to them, just as the first shots began firing in the distance. “Spock, keep trying to raise the ship.”
The landing party started winding their way through the thick forest growth while behind them the clomp of heavy boots joined the sounds of energy weapons fire. Kirk led them up a gentle slope away from the stream to slightly higher ground. He hoped that a fight against these aliens was not inevitable, but if it was, he needed to put his people in the most defensible position possible.
“No response from the Enterprise,” Spock said, running up parallel with the captain and keeping pace with him. He hadn’t even broken a sweat yet, damn his Vulcan stamina.
“I was afraid of that,” Kirk said, ducking under a low-hanging branch as he ran. “We may be forced to hold out here on our own until the cavalry arrives.” If it arrives, he thought.
“In that case, I suggest changing our course,” Spock said, pointing in a direction nearly perpendicular to the way they were moving. “There is a relatively large stone outcropping this way which should offer a better degree of protection.”
The captain simply nodded, and Spock moved ahead of him, zigzagging over the uneven sloped ground with the ease of a mountain goat, or whatever the analogous animal native to Vulcan’s mountainous regions. Kirk stopped and turned back to make sure the rest of the party were still together, and directed them to move ahead of him, following after Spock. D’Abruzzo was bringing up the rear, and after all the others had passed ahead of him, he stopped short. “You first, Captain,” the security officer said when Kirk tried to gesture him on.
“Lieutenant, we don’t have the time for—”
Kirk’s reprimand was cut off when a phased energy beam streaked up at them from the bottom of the slope and struck D’Abruzzo in the arm. The lieutenant yelped and staggered in pain, but maintained enough presence of mind to raise his other hand and fire back at his assailant. Kirk started firing his phaser as well, while at the same time, he wrapped his other arm around D’Abruzzo’s waist and pulled him in the direction of the outcropping.
Somehow the captain got himself and D’Abruzzo to the relative safety of a large line of limestone-like rock jutting up from the hillside, where the other members of the landing party were giving them covering fire. D’Abruzzo all but crumpled to the ground once they stopped running, and Kirk motioned to O’Reilly to come to his side and administer what emergency first aid she could. The captain then moved up to where Spock was pressed against the outcropping, phaser in hand. “I’d say this is yet another sign of higher life-forms on this world, wouldn’t you, Spock?”
“I will assume you don’t actually require an answer to that, Captain,” Spock replied. “Is the lieutenant seriously injured?”
“Seriously enough,” Kirk said. “If we don’t get him to sickbay quickly . . .” Of all the times to decide to leave McCoy on the ship . . .
* * *
Every system on the bridge threatened to fail at once, with the exception of the emergency alert klaxons, which sounded their steady warnings. “Report!” Sulu had to shout to be heard above the noise.
Chekov studied his console with anger and confusion. “I’m not sure,” he answered. “I think we were just struck by a nystromite asteroid.”
“What?” Sulu moved up behind him and looked at the sensor readouts over Chekov’s shoulder. “Something bigger than particulate matter, you mean?”
“It sure didn’t feel like particulate matter,” Chekov quipped.
“Ensign,” Sulu said, reminding him with that single word that he couldn’t address the temporary commander of the ship in the same way he did his colleague at the astrogation console.
“Yes, sir, a larger-sized asteroid,” Chekov said, at the same time checking the sensor readouts before him, trying to spot the nystromite mass in the mess of indistinct and nearly incoherent readings.
“Damage reports coming in from Decks Six and Seven,” reported Lieutenant Rogers at the science station. “Whatever hit us had to be close to the size of a shuttlecraft.”
“How did we not see something the size of a shuttlecraft coming at us?” Sulu asked in a tone of disbelief.
Chekov wished he had an answer for him. The refinements Spock had programmed into the sensor computers should have allowed them to pick up something as large as that, even if they hadn’t been looking for it this far into the system. But even now, as he was actively searching, Chekov wasn’t seeing anything coming up on their scans. He redirected the external sensor arrays and intensified his scan of the area near the point of impact, and saw nothing.
From behind him, Chekov heard Uhura say, “Lieutenant, there’s something interfering with our communications that may be interfering with sensors, as well.”
“Intentionally?” Sulu asked Uhura, just as the ship was rocked again. He didn’t wait for the communications officer’s answer, and instead addressed the relief helmsman. “Mister Stevenson, evasive pattern alpha!”
“Impact on the engineering hull, starboard,” Rogers informed the bridge as Stevenson complied with Sulu’s order. Meanwhile, Chekov switched the focus of his scans in response to Rogers’s report, and this time discovered something he hadn’t expected to see.
“Mister Sulu!” he shouted, and without prompting, put what he had found up on the main viewscreen. “Look!”
The entire bridge crew turned forward and looked at the view from the external visual pickup, located in the rear of the saucer section just below the impulse engines. From its vantage point at the top of the Enterprise’s saucer section the engineering section extended away, with the two nacelle pylons branching outward from the center of the hull in a V. Space beyond was black and starless, due to the field surrounding the system. There was still no indication of any asteroids, nystromite or otherwise. But there was, just off to the starboard side of the ship, a very small, very dim flare flashing briefly before disappearing. “What was that?” Sulu asked, moving forward again to stand to Chekov’s side at the end of the console.
“It looked like the output of a fusion rocket,” Chekov said. “And it looks like it’s mounted to a shuttle-sized mass of nystromite.”
“So the nystromite can be used as a weapon,” Sulu said, just as the ship was struck aga
in.
And then again.
* * *
Kirk threw his arm across the top of the stone formation, fired two quick phaser blasts, and then ducked back behind the barrier as the aliens returned fire. Large chunks of stone were blasted free, raining down on Kirk’s back. He could not help but wince as they cut through his shirt and bit into his skin.
The captain paused and listened to the whine of energy beams flying overhead. Spock crawled over to where he was crouched. “Our situation is becoming untenable, Captain.”
Kirk shook his head, even though he knew his unerringly logical friend was correct. They were outnumbered, and the stone formation behind which they had taken refuge was being steadily chipped away by superior firepower. Unless the Enterprise came to their rescue soon—and with each passing second, the hope they would do so became dimmer and dimmer—he’d have to give the team the order to break cover and retreat. Where they might hope to retreat to was a question there wasn’t any good answer to.
Another hailstorm of stone shrapnel rained down on him and Spock. When Kirk felt it safe to open his eyes again, he found himself looking in the direction of Joe D’Abruzzo, lying unconscious just a few meters back. They’d been forced to tie a tourniquet around his wounded arm—the most primitive and brutal form of medical treatment Kirk could think of—but he had already lost a tremendous amount of blood before that. If he was lucky, he’d only lose his arm. If he wasn’t lucky . . .
Kirk turned to Spock again, and after exchanging a look with him, came to a decision. “Hold your fire!” he called out, primarily to his own team, but loud enough to be heard by the alien squadron. “Hold your fire!”
The other members of the landing party dropped behind the outcropping and stayed down below its top edge. The firing from below continued, but its intensity had fallen off perceptibly. Then . . .
“Cease fire.” The alien voice spoke in a tone of complete authority, and he was instantly obeyed. “Are you surrendering yourselves, Taarpi?” the voice called out again.
“Yes,” Kirk said, not bothering to correct his misidentification.
“Show yourself, then.”
Kirk handed his phaser to Spock, and then raised both his empty hands, palms out, over the edge of the stone barricade. When the alien weapons remained silent, he slowly raised his head, and his upper body, into view of the aliens on the other side. Looking down toward the bottom of the slope, he counted nine or so soldiers, all in identical armored uniforms, and all armed. All aimed at him from tactical vantage points behind trees and other pieces of cover, with the exception of one, apparently their leader, who stood out in the open. The reflections on their helmet visors obscured their faces, but once Kirk had fully revealed himself, their body language betrayed surprise. Whatever a Taarpi was, Kirk clearly didn’t bear a very close resemblance to one. “Who and what are you?” the alien leader demanded.
“My name is James T. Kirk. I am the captain of the Starship Enterprise, representing the United Federation of Planets. We apologize for trespassing on this world. We are explorers; we meant you no harm.”
“United Federation of Planets?” the leader repeated.
Kirk nodded. “Yes. We are a union of over a hundred worlds, located about one hundred light-years away.”
“Really?” Though Kirk still could not make out the alien’s facial expression, his voice conveyed what sounded like absolute shock, bordering on fascination.
Kirk decided to press this advantage. “One of my men is seriously injured, and in dire need of medical attention. Can you help him?”
“I’m a physician!” One of the other alien soldiers abandoned his cover and moved forward.
The leader quickly moved to intercept him. “Deeshal!” he admonished, as he put out an arm to hold him back.
“You’ve already accepted their surrender,” the one named Deeshal argued. “We’re obligated to offer care to them now, Commander.”
“I didn’t know what they were when I accepted,” the leader countered. “We don’t know anything about these people. Plus we have our own casualties to take care of.”
“Our worst casualty suffered nothing more than a concussion, because they’re using nonlethal weapons,” Deeshal said, refusing to back down. “Knowing that about them is by itself enough for me to trust them.”
The two men considered one another wordlessly for several seconds before the alien commander finally dropped his restraining hand and gestured for the doctor to go on ahead. Deeshal came running up the incline, pulling off his helmet as he did. The captain was somewhat surprised to see that he was not of the same amphibian species they had encountered in the clearing. Rather, Deeshal somewhat resembled a Caitian, though with a longer muzzle and a thick mane of pale yellow fur circling his face. “Where is your injured soldier?” he asked as he reached Kirk.
The captain gestured to where D’Abruzzo lay on the ground, with O’Reilly and Frank kneeling beside him wearing expressions of helplessness. The medic quickly moved to his side and knelt as well. “What is his familiar name?” he asked as he pulled a small handheld device from a pouch on his belt.
“Joe,” Frank answered.
“Hello, Joe. My name is Deeshal,” he said in a soft, soothing tone as he began to move his scanner over D’Abruzzo’s torso and shoulder. As he watched the physician go about his examination, Kirk was taken by his bedside manner, and how humane—how human—his behavior was. It was a marked contrast from being chased and shot at, to say the least.
And as if to remind him that the danger had not yet passed, Spock and Farah suddenly raised their phasers, aiming behind Kirk. He spun, and saw that the alien leader had moved about three paces closer while his back had been turned. Stupid, he berated himself. “We didn’t say anything about anyone other than your doctor coming up here.”
The alien leader, now frozen in his tracks, said, “Of course. I have no intention of violating our truce, Captain James T. Kirk.” He held his rifle out to his side, pointed to the sky, and with his free hand, he detached the faceplate from his helmet, revealing himself to also be a leonine alien like Deeshal. “My name, by the way, is Laspas, Commander, of the Goeg Domain Defense Corps. I do regret mistaking you for the criminals we’ve been tracking, and the injury to your soldier, as well.”
The man’s apology sounded sincere to Kirk’s ears. “I appreciate that, Commander Laspas,” he acknowleged, and then decided to take a step forward himself, further closing the gap between the two of them. “And I do hope that now the Federation and the Goeg Domain will be able to move beyond this misunderstanding to a more positive interaction.”
Laspas’s lips pulled back in a wide smile. “I would be very happy if that were to be,” he replied. Kirk returned the smile, his hope for a positive outcome to this mission rebounding.
That hope was dampened when he noticed Spock and the alien doctor, wearing a dour expression, coming his way. “How is he?” Kirk asked them both.
“He is in very poor condition.” Deeshal’s head tipped as he spoke, his jaw touching his chest. “But I’ve done what I can for now, and I believe I should be able to forestall any serious permanent damage.”
“Forestall it for how long?” Kirk asked.
The doctor put his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “I can’t say. There are some similarities between our species, but also far too many differences. I don’t have enough knowledge of your species.”
“Your ship . . .” Kirk turned back toward Laspas, who continued, “I assume you have medical facilities aboard. Is it nearby?”
The captain was momentarily taken aback by the question. Were their captors really considering letting them go? “It’s in orbit,” he answered. Or, it’s supposed to be, he added silently to himself. At this point, he could only hope that if these soldiers did permit them to go, they would still have a way to leave.
“Then you have a shuttlecraft?” Laspas asked.
“No. We—” He cut himself off before gettin
g sidetracked into an explanation of the transporter, and instead asked, “May I try contacting our ship?”
Laspas nodded. “You may.”
Even though Laspas was no longer brandishing his weapon at him, Kirk made sure to move slowly as he reached for his communicator and flipped the grille into its open position. “Kirk to Enterprise. Enterprise, come in.”
This time, through the wash of electronic interference, he faintly heard what he thought was Uhura’s voice, and underneath that, the unmistakable sound of the Red Alert klaxons. “Uhura! What’s happening up there?” If Uhura answered, her reply was lost in the background noise. “Dammit!”
Kirk turned and looked back at Spock, who also now had his communicator out. He was attempting to adjust the device’s settings, but having no luck. “There appears to have been a marked increase in interference from the nystromite, Captain,” he said. “I am having difficulty counteracting it.”
“ ‘Nystromite’?” Laspas asked.
“The crystalline substance that envelops this system,” Kirk explained. “Keep trying, Spock.”
“And you say the levels have suddenly increased?”
Spock gave the alien leader an appraising look. “That would seem to be the case, yes.”
An oddly triumphant expression came across Laspas’s face as he reached up and touched the side of his helmet. “814: status codes 1-7 and 1-25. Directive 1-42, execute.”
Kirk was nearly knocked off his feet then, as the ground began to vibrate violently. A near-deafening rumble rolled over and through their hillside, and when Kirk turned to look up over the top of the ridge above them, he saw a large, heavily armored gray-green space vessel lifting off and up into the pale blue sky. It measured about seventy meters long, with an angular, almost boxy shape, and two arching wings extended out from either side, supporting heavy warp nacelles. It was clearly not intended primarily as an atmospheric craft, and lacked any of the elegant curves of the Enterprise, yet it ascended with a smooth grace and confidence Kirk found he could admire. “Your ship?” Kirk shouted over the roaring engines at the alien leader, as it rose higher into the sky.
Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity Page 4